"I'm a little baby few days old
I'm a little snick snack some days old
I'm a little jabber talker lotta days old
and I'm a little butterfly one minute old"

Eyes of Laura Mars (spoiler alert)

John Waters once said that there are no bad films because if you are watching something you don't like, you can always just amuse yourself by studying the various light fixtures on the set. Well, gender provides me with all the light fixtures I need to get through just about anything. Laura Mars is a photographer plagued by visions of violent murder. All of a sudden, something will come over her and she won't be looking through her own eyes, but through the eyes of the killer. The killer is slowly but steadily picking off the people who are close to Laura and her work. As we watch, we see Laura tangled in a web of men, each pulling on her with his sticky silk threads from a different direction. At first we are led down the classic homophobic/transphobic horror route, but as it turns out the film veers completely from that path and instead asks us to fear something really terrifying: the overprotective macho with "mother" issues! In the end, Laura is able to save herself because she honors her illogical, hysterical, instinctive visions. I spent a lot of this movie wondering why such a strong, talented artist would let herself be pushed around by so many manipulative men, but when it comes right down to it (kind of like in real life) the Feminine so clearly mops up the court with the oppressor that their manipulations just seem childish in comparison with her wisdom.

What she said.

It is happening again. It is happening again.

I can hardly wait to see Rosa!

"it is easier to die when you have lived than it is to die when you haven't, so i say to all young people go make memories - beautiful memories - so when the time comes for you to go you will not go alone."

dorian paskowitz

A Moment Of Victory

so that's what she's saying!
Thanks to Danielle at 95.7 Jamz in the Ham for taking my preposterous call looking for the "mouse cheese" song.

It's Zoe's Birthday!

I wish you a day (week, year, life) in which you feel all of the love and dedication you give to others directed back at you. You have turned your struggle into triumph in a way that would never have been possible if you had hidden from the struggle. Now you are the guardian of the others who have been chosen for the long way around. You teach us to use our dangerous gifts.

Oh, yes -It's On.

A Birthday Song for Joanna and Jesse

patti smith kimberly.wma -

Dear Joanna, I'm not sure if you know it, but you went on a trip to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee last week. Your presence with us was so strong - memories shared with you, wisdom learned from you, changing into wedding clothes in the car with you, love, admiration, pride, awe, and gratitude felt for you accompanied us every day. This includes yesterday, twenty-nine years to the day after Georgia birthed you. In the morning we stretched and moulded our bodies into the ancient forms of the asanas, doing the daily work of love and courage. My practice was dedicated to you because you have worked your body and mind and heart so hard for love and courage, and I have been bearing witness to your stamina.

Dear Jophet, my three-headed accomplice in tooth-brushing and group decision making: Yesterday, on Joanna's birthday, a great wave of bliss and reality and the composting carcasses of dinosaurs - hatched from their dino-eggs, grown to greatness and then brought back to the bosom of the Great Mother without even a pine box to interfere - carried us other two back to the sylvania of our Birth. (We still don't know what it means.) Today, thirty years to the day after Laura birthed you, we sent our love to you and then continued the parting of ways - letting the nourishment we gained in our togetherness give us strength to continue the work of our individual lives.

Three decades ago, Laura and Georgia birthed you and you first unleashed your voices in this world with powerful cries - your souls had been in a place beyond life and death, weighing their options. With those cries you announced to us that you had decided to stay on Earth for a while, each taking on the form of a tiny and fierce human being. A little while later we met you, and in life-processes of which we were not conscious at the time, our selves began to intertwine. Now when we reunite there may be friction and there is always at least one of us missing, but there is also the succor of a rent being healed. It is with this unification so present to us that we celebrate your births - each of us having let you shape our identities, you holding each of us in yours.

Oh baby, I remember when you were born,
It was dawn and the storm settled in my belly
And I rolled in the grass and I spit out the gas
And I lit a match and the void went flash
And the sky split and the planets hit,
Balls of jade dropped and existence stopped, stopped, stop, stop.
Little sister, the sky is falling, I don't mind, I don't mind.
Little sister, the fates are calling on you.

This Is Why I Love Rosa

My email is always already almost full, so tonight I decided it was time to go through it and get rid of some of the messages from my most regular correspondent, Rosa Nilpfrd. Here is one that I won't be deleting:

Subject: Pinch me

Did you call me in the middle of the night, high on afterbirth, and tell me I should visit you this weekend?

Or was it all a dream?


Almost born,
Rosa

lauryn hill synergy

"While you're fuming I'm consuming mango juice under Polaris.
You're just embarrassed 'cause it's your Last Tango in Paris."

"While you're imitating Al Capone
I'll be Nina Simone
and defacating on your microphone."